Colts Season Ends With Mixed Fortunes

The Grangemouth Colts first season has been a revelation. The Club created a development team, in the words of Head Coach Fraser Thomson, “designed to get fringe players the game time that their training levels deserved. We wanted them to be competitive in games and to win a few of them”.

The team did that and then some. They came second in the Div 1 HNC and made it to National Finals in August, and this past weekend they were playing for a chance to play in the top flight of Flag Football.

The Colts traveled to Manchester where they were to play the Inverclyde Comets. The Comets were in the play-offs because they were at the bottom of the Premier HNC division, not from lack of talent, more from a lack of consistency. Before the big game though they had the chance to warm up against other Premier opposition, the Chichester Sharks. The Sharks were in a similar situation to the Comets. Lots of talent, including a past GB quarterback and a couple of people on the GB fringes, just not the results.

The Colts were once again without regular quarterback Andy Brown, so once again Steven Cliffe stepped up for QB duty for the day. Despite the disappointing performances at the National Finals the team had bounced back in a big way and were ready for this weekend.

Against the Sharks, the Colts showed that the hard work put in over the past few weeks was paying off. While this game was a loss, the confidence that comes from being able to compete was immeasurable. A final score of 32 – 12 was a decent result. The Colts scorers were Gordon McSherry and rookie Kristopher Walker. Walker also caught an interception, as did Billy Corner and Mark Wallace.

The score in the match against the Comets may have been lopsided in the end, the performance was anything but. It was always going to be tough against a team with the individual quality that the Comets have, but every Colts player on the park gave everything they had and we got the couple of scores we had aimed for before the game. Kristopher Walker scored his second TD of the day and Mark Wallace got his first.

So while we had a regular season where we exceeded our expectations, the post season was a little disappointing. Not from lack of effort, it maybe came round just a little bit early for our developing team.

Fraser’s last words on the season were, “While undoubtedly the teams around us will also improve, there can be no excuses for not looking to push on for the division title next season and I look forward to the challenge.”